stood up,
and a chill went through my veins. His eyes were like
smoke. The man
with the red beard snapped, “One thing here’s sure.
We’re all engaged,
whatever our reasons, in a test. It’s ungenteel, no doubt, to mention it. But I never was long on gentility. These kings don’t loll here, day after day, some showing
off
their wares by the walls, some flashing their wits at
the dinnertable,
for nothing. I say we get on with it.” He glared from
table
to table, red-faced, his short, thick body charged with
wrath.
Kreon looked startled and glanced in alarm at Ipnolebes. “Jason,” the red-bearded man said fiercely, pointing a
finger
that shook with indignation, “if you mean to play,
then play.
If not, pack off! Make room for men that are serious!” Jason smiled, but his eyes were as bright as nails.
“I assure you,
I had no Idea there were stakes involved, and I’ve no
intention
of playing for them, whatever they are. I am, as you
know,
a beggar here. I leave the game to you, my dissilient friend, whatever it is.”
The man with the red beard scoffed,
tense lips trembling like the wires of a harp, his eyes
like a dog’s.
“We’re to understand that Jason, known far and wide
for his cunning,
has no idea of what every other lout here, drunk or sober, has seen by plain signs: Pyripta’s for sale, and we’re bidding.” He pointed as he spoke, his face
bright red with rage,
whether at Pyripta for her calfy innocence, or at Kreon
for his guile,
or at devious Jason, no one could tell. Like a mad dog, a misanthrope out of the woods, he turned on all of
them, pointing
at the girl, scorning the elegant forms of their civility. Pyripta gasped and hid her face, and the blood
rushed up
till even her forehead burned red. Like one fierce man,
the crowd,
half-rising, roared their anger. He glared at them,
trembling all over,
his head lowered, pulled inward like a bull’s. “Get him
out of here!”
Kreon shouted. “He’s drunk!” But when men moved
toward him
he batted them off like a bear. Men jerked out daggers
and began
to circle him. He drew his own and, hunched tight, guarding with one arm, rolled his small eyes, watching
them all.
Then Jason rose and called out twice in a loud voice, “Wait!” The crowd, the circle of men with their daggers
drawn,
looked up at him. “No need for this,” he said. “A man in a rage is often enough a man who thinks he’s right though the whole world’s against him. I know this
wildman Kompsis.
Dog-eyed, fierce as he is, he tells you the truth as he
sees it—
sparing no feelings. He may be a rough, impatient man, a truculent fool, but he means less evil than you
think. He’s been
a friend to me. Let him be.” The men encircling
Kompsis
hesitated, then put their weapons away. Red Kompsis glowered at Jason, angry but humbled. Then he too
sheathed
his knife. Men talked, at the tables, leaning toward
each other,
and the sound soon filled the hall.
Jason sat down. As if
to himself, he said, “How quickly and easily it always
comes, this
violence! It’s a strange thing. Poor mad mankind!” “God knows!” said Kreon, his voice shaky. The
princess, her face
still hidden behind her hands, was weeping. It was
not cunning—
not Jason’s famous capacity for transforming all evils to advantages — that showed on his face. The son of Aison, whatever else, was a man sensitive to pain. It was that, past
anything else,
that set him apart, made a stranger of Jason wherever
he went.
He suffered too fiercely the troubles of people around
him. It made him
cool, intellectual. Nietzsche would have understood. If
he was
proud, usurped the prerogatives of gods … Never
mind.
I was moved, watching from the shadows. He was a
man much wronged
by history, by classics professors. Jason leaned forward, speaking to Kreon now, but speaking so Pyripta would
hear:
“It’s a hard thing, I know myself, for a man to give up his natural pride. The outrage strikes and stings, and
before
you know it, you’ve turned, struck back. It makes me
envy women.
They’ve got no option of learning ‘the art of punching
people,’
and as for making fools out of people by abstract talk— Time and Space, the ultimate causes of things, and so
forth—
their quick minds run in the wrong direction, inclined
by nature
to thoughts of their children, comforting the weak,
by gentleness soothing
their huffing, puffing males. The fiercest of women
reveal
their best in arts like those.”
The table talk died down.
A few of those nearest had caught his allusions to
Koprophoros’ speech.
Jason went on, half-smiling, conversational (but Hera was in him, and Athena; his eyes were sly).
He said,
forming his words with care, yet hiding his trouble with
his tongue:
“When Pelias scorned me, refused me all honors
because, as he put it,
I was “wild,” not fit to be anything more than a river
tramp,
I wanted to strangle the fool. I’d have gotten off cheap,
no doubt.
The people are always more fond of their wild young
river tramps
than of grand old tyrants who stutter.” He laughed,
looked down at his hands.
Like lightning the goddess Hera returned to the
red-bearded man.
“You were scared, Jason. Admit it! Or did it seem
uncivil?”
Jason laughed again, to himself. Athena poked him. “No, not scared,” he said, and let it pass.
Old Kreon
cleared his throat and squeezed one eye shut, tapping
his fingers.
“As a matter of fact,” he said, “I’d be pleased to hear
about it.
We all would, I’m sure.”
A few of the sea-kings clapped, then more.
Pyripta glanced at him, blushing, unaware of the gentle
touch
of dark Aphrodite’s fingertips on her wrist — for the
goddess,
fickle, perpetually changing, could never resist a chance to prove herself. (Yet even now, no doubt, her concern was mainly for Medeia.) Still Jason frowned and
thought.
In the end
they prevailed upon him — and though he insisted he
felt like a fool
to be launching a tale so cumbersome (it was late,
besides:
by the stars it was almost midnight now) he began it.
The slaves
passed wine, and those who had nothing to do collected
in doorways
or stood by the treasured walls, listening. More than
a few
in Kreon’s hall had heard those fabulous tales of the
Argo,
strange adventures from the days of the princes’
exodus,
some in one version, some in another, no two agreeing; and more than a few had heard about Jason’s
storytelling,
celebrated to the rim of the world.
Reluctant as he was
to speak, his eyes took on a glint. He knew pretty well— Hera watching, invisible, over his shoulder, crafty— that whether or not he was playing for the throne, the
sighing princess,
he meant to make fools, for his sport, of fat
Koprophoros
and the Northerner, shrewd as they seemed. As he
spoke, he smiled. Near the roof
an owl was perched, stone-silent, with glittering eyes.
A lizard,
light as a stick, peeked from the wall, then darted back. Nearby, the slave Amekhenos, with the boy beside him, leaned on the door to listen, head bowed. He too, I
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